I’d like to find a reason to believe she’s a political force who stands for something in an era when there is a real appetite for serious change. She could, after all, decide to campaign vociferously in favor of the ACA this summer and fall (universal healthcare is, after all, one of her positions), but that might siphon money away from her foundation and candidacy. She could get out there and start framing a foreign policy vision. But, again, too risky. I see nothing that suggests a real passion for getting on with the fight – just the usual presumptions of a super-elite, super-rich and super-cocooned politician of the gilded age.

So I did watch the Daily Show interview last week, and was not surprised. As in most of her softball media appearances, she was both unctuous and vapid. But even I was aghast at the sheer emptiness and datedness of her one attempt to articulate a future for American foreign policy. She actually said that our main problem is that we haven’t been celebrating America enough, that we “have not been telling our story very well” and that if we just “get back to telling” that story about how America stands for freedom and opportunity, we can rebuild our diminished international stature. One obvious retort: wasn’t she, as secretary of state, you know, responsible for telling that tale – so isn’t she actually criticizing herself?

Next up: could she say something more vacuous and anodyne? Or something more out of tune with a post-Iraq, post-torture, post- Afghanistan world? Peter Beinart had the same reaction: “As a vision for America’s relations with the world,” he wrote, “this isn’t just unconvincing. It’s downright disturbing”:

My fear is that she doesn’t actually mean any of this. She just needed to say something, and so came out with a stream of consciousness that is completely platitudinous and immune to Fox News attacks. It’s a defensive crouch that is always her first instinct. Think of the Terry Gross interview – and her discomfort in grappling with actual disagreement, from her own base that time. Her goal is always safety. And safety won’t cut it in a populist age.

So if she runs, my guess is she’ll wrap herself tightly in the maximalist concept of American exceptionalism and make this her appeal as a post-Obama presidency. See? she’ll say to the same voting groups she went for last time. I’m a real American, and I believe in America. And yay America!

Maybe this is merely a function that she isn’t running yet (and still may not). Why stir the pot if your goal at this point is merely selling books and raking in more corporate, Goldman Sacks dough? But when, I wonder, has she been otherwise? She remains scarred by the 1990s, understandably so. But the country has moved on in a way she seems to find hard to comprehend.

BooMan also sees the world as changing but still doesn’t go along with Sullivan:

In the next couple of decades, America is going to have to grapple with two major changes. The first is that there are going to be new first-world powers, like China, Brazil and India, that we will have to reckon with. The West will not be driving things the way we have been accustomed to since the end of World War Two.

The second is that the American electorate is going to be more diverse and left-leaning, more like Europe.

In both cases, Hillary Clinton seems ill-suited to be our leader. The future is more Bill de Blasio than Andrew Cuomo, and the Clintons probably don’t get that. Still, Andrew Sullivan’s dripping contempt of the Clintons is irritating. He opposes them for all the wrong reasons and none of the right ones.

While I think the Clintons are a bit “out of time,” I don’t necessarily think this is a terrible thing for a country that is going to have some serious difficulties adjusting to new realities. Clinton could serve as a bit of a buffer, allowing the country to adjust to the changed world in way that doesn’t put too much shock into the system.

2 Comments

All of the criticisms mentioned here concern me about a Clinton campaign and a Clinton presidency. The corporate money ties, the policy emptiness, etc. Recently someone asked her what book influenced her the most, and she answered “the Bible.” This was around the same time that she was telling the financial industry in a speech what political victims they were and there’s no sense blaming them for crashing the markets and sending the economy down the tubes, or in regulating them so it doesn’t happen again. Last I recall the story about Jesus and the money changers was still in Matthew 21:12. OTOH, in the 2008 campaign, I think I recall correctly that Clinton, contra Obama, had a much better understanding of Social Security, and so if she runs, I can hold out this tiny hope on her behalf.

Sorry, a little late on this one because glorious ‘global warming’, so rare here, offers inducements to get outside to country or seaside.

Anyway, Sullivan is spot on in my view. Neither ‘HillBilly’ (or ‘BillHilly’ come to that) have announce of philosophy/ideology (call it what you will) in their combined bodies which was fortunate in his case because it allowed him to ditch dogma and cut a deal with the GOP who made his presidency such a success.

She is in politics because she’s too ugly to get into films, either way, it’s just ‘showbiz’ to her. I want ‘Fauxcahontas’ to run, at least that will force America to decide once and for all whether they really do want socialism or not.